Nevada City, CA — Retired Cement Hill resident Jerry Caustic has always considered himself a Renaissance Man. He can often be heard offering his opinions on various topics at any given time, whether you want to hear them or not. He never apologizes for his controversial opinions, frequently proclaiming that doing so is a sign of weakness.

Over the past week, he had even more reason not to apologize: his DSL was down. Although the disruption in his internet service did not stop him from posting on his Readers Will Note blog, his appearances became less frequent. All six members of his blog had difficulty adapting to his absence.

“I finally had to talk to my wife,” said a frequent blog visitor and a self-proclaimed asshole who goes by the unflattering handle ‘Kentucky Flat Dipshit.’ “Turns out she hates me, and now I have to move out. But I get to keep my guns and my medication.”

Others did not even seem to notice that Mr. Caustic was gone. Penn Valley resident and former dog catcher candidate Brock Whalen, for instance, commented on the virtues of Donald Trump in blog postings that had nothing to do with the former president.

“Here’s the thing you don’t understand,” said a condescending Mr. Whalen in a two-year-old discussion about linear algebra in STEM education. “I’m a lawyer, and I understand these things. But, if Trump were still president, Putin wouldn’t be doing this. Because Trump was unpredictable, and that scares Putin.”

Over the years, Mr. Caustic waxed poetic about the virtues of the free market and its ability to provide for the country’s citizens while collecting a social security check and Medicare benefits. So when the free market failed him in the form of internet access, he addressed the contradiction by simply not discussing it.

The telephone company restored his DSL earlier this week. According to the work crew at the scene, the downtime was caused by squirrels chewing through some of the lines and not, as Mr. Caustic maintained, due to BLM and ANTIFA activists plotting to take over America, starting at his Cement Hill property.